A transportation management system, in response to ride requests, may match the needs of ride requestors with ride providers who are willing to use their vehicles to provide the requested transportation or services. For instance, through a transportation application installed on a mobile device, a ride requestor may submit a request for a ride from a starting location to a destination location at a particular time. In response to the request, the transportation management system may match the ride requestor's needs with any number of available ride providers and notify the matching ride providers of the ride request. The ride providers, through a corresponding transportation application installed on their respective mobile devices, may see the request notification and accept or reject the ride request. Once a ride provider accepts the request, the transportation management system may, in response, facilitate the ride transaction between the matched ride requestor and ride provider. A transportation management system may also fulfill ride requests by dispatching autonomous vehicles. For instance, in response to a ride request, a transportation management system may dispatch and instruct an autonomous vehicle in a fleet of autonomous vehicles managed by the system (or by a third party system in communication with the transportation management system) to transport the requestor. An autonomous vehicle may be a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating with little to no human input. The autonomous vehicle may be equipped with a variety of systems or modules for enabling it to determine its surroundings and safely navigate to target destinations.
In conventional transportation management systems, human drivers typically manage maintenance and cleaning of the vehicles they drive. With technological progress in autonomous vehicles, transportation services may dispatch autonomous vehicles to fulfill transportation requests. In contrast to human-driven vehicles, autonomous vehicles do not have corresponding human drivers who would maintain or service the vehicles as they operate the vehicles. As such, a transportation system using autonomous vehicles may manage more than matching and dispatching autonomous vehicles to fulfill transportation requests from transportation requestors.